Our prayers and hearts go out to all the victims’ families in Nepal and the neighboring countries that were hit by the earthquake. Our condolences and prayers to them.

Over 4000 people affected by the earthquake as reported by Deccan Herald. Please donate to support the suffering families if possible either on Facebook or you can contribute to the Deccan Herald/Praja Vani trust.

Kaushal and Aditya joined Manasi to offer their tip of the day about Instagram. Instagram has released a stand-alone app called ‘Layout’ similar to stand-alone app that Instagram released in 2014 called ‘Hyper Laps’ for vids.

The new app ‘Layout’ helps users create a collage – with this app one can deconstruct a product or show them in different styles. It helps identify faces, helps add some interesting effects adjusting, cropping and even filtering on pictures.

Here’s a cool tip: While creating your videos or podcasts, background music becomes a requirement. Unfortunately there are hardly any available royalty. Aditya helps us overcome this problem with a website: Incompetech.com that can give you royalty free music, all you need to do is give credits.

Capgemini buys iGate for $4.04 Billion: One of the biggest mergers to take on rivals IBM and Accenture. NASDAQ listed iGate has revenues of over $1.2 billion, with staff of over 33,000 people.

Economic Times quoted Yesterday that 2014-15 is the year in which industries saw the impact of technology like cloud computing and analytics.

Couple predictions:
1. 550 million connected consumers by 2018
2. 54% of the connected class will be 25 years and over
3. Approximately 50% of this connected class of people will come from Rural areas
4. User base will consist of women about 1/3 of the connected segment.

Livemint.com reports that makemytrip.com is rapidly expanding (mobile contribution to traffic rose from 20% in 2013 to 33% in 2014).
Makemytrip.com is planning to acquire travel-related start-ups to grow and face the competition. Strategies formakemytrip.com as reported by livemint.com:
1. Increase business through mobile
2. High margin non-flight related business – like hotel booking
3. Buy lot of start-ups in travel related business

Focus on mobile app seems to be the business’ priority.

Indiaproperty.com is raising $50 million as a part of expansion plans. Their focus from South India is now expanding to other Geographies, reports Ganesh Vasudevan, CEO of Indiaproperty.com says investment on various things, scouting talent being one of the top priorities. News as published by livemint.com

Tips:

1. Check out theskimm.com – all the top news skimmed and served to help you save time and ensuring your hobby is tended to.
2. Manjunath joins us for the 2nd tip – Facebook’s Blueprint training is now available online free. Check out facebook.com/blueprint, marketers can learn about how to market on Facebook with this comprehensive training designed and developed by Facebook.

We need your help, there is debate on the pros and cons of learning digital marketing online vs offline. We would like you to share your thoughts and opinions on this. Please share your opinions by mailing us at manasi@webmarketing.in

Thanks for listening to Digital India Podcast’s Weekly Update – Episode 16. We will share more awesome tips and news next week, until then enjoy the rest of the week and the long weekend!